🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most iconic entrance in movie lore – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, navigates a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself at the barrier, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his strictly demanding acting coach his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a sore point for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s to Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a plain speaker who loathed the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he was required to perform the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days financial aid was available to attend Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred over theater. He stopped drinking in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply